Wheat futures in the US managed to close higher in overnight trade. Corn and soybeans futures were higher but only marginally so.
With temperatures increasing across the US winter and spring wheat belt those locations that are suffering from the dry will start to hurt. Large swathes of the spring wheat belt and western Kansas and Oklahoma are still very dry.
The crop progress report that the USDA put out is a little confusing though as it continues to suggest that crops in some of the driest areas are not as advanced in maturity as they would normally be. This goes against what we might normally expect to see in a stressed crop.
This raises a couple of questions, one is the integrity of the USDA report. I can hear you all gasping in horror and surprise that this report might not be 100% accurate, yes I know, it’s hard to believe. But if the report is accurate than the myriad of other market wires talking the condition of the crop down might well be over dramatising the situation. Yes another shocking revelation, media over dramatising something…well, there’s a first.
In the meantime we see FOB offers for wheat from Australia’s west coast up US$1.25 to US$245.25, from the PNW of the USA up US$6.50 to US$231.75 and even HRW out of the Gulf is firmer, up US$4 to US$228.76. The only locations around the world that saw a slight reduction in offer values were out of the Black Sea. With the Russian ministry finally agreeing with the rest of the world that 2018-19 production is starting to suffer from the dry you might expect Black Sea offers to start to firm in the short term too.